Battery issue (6-cells) with my X220

For few weeks now, I have been experiencing a very frustrating battery issue with my X220.

Usually I put my laptop in hibernation while there is still a good battery capacity (70-80%) at night (or before going to work).

On the next day, when restarting the laptop, both Power manager and the windows gauge are indicating close to the same percentage as just before it was stopped the night before.

Then after a random time, ranging from few minutes to a hour or so, windows will notify me that the battery is at a critical level of charge (6%) while just before both Power manager and windows indicator were showing something like 60% remaining.

At that point windows shows 6% while power manager still shows the previous level of charge (let say 60%). After few minutes, Power manager indicator goes all to 6% and then the PC hibernates.

I think that my issue appeared after I updated Power manager, I reinstalled it including its driver with no luck...

I am now performing a battery reset to see if it helps.

I read several other posts regarding similar issues on the lenovo forums, it was suggested that some battery cells might been faulty and that a battery swap might solve the problem. However, as far as I read, it seems that people who performed a battery swap were still experiencing the issue.

I wanted to know if there were any know fix for this battery issue or at least what steps I should be taking to investigate/debug this issue?

Re: Battery issue (6-cells) with my X220

To get the obvious out of the way, when your battery life suddenly drops off, are you watching YouTube or surfing Flash-heavy web sites?

Yeah, a sudden drop-off in indicated battery life sounds like a driver issue, so I dunno...maybe you could try rolling back the battery driver or Power Manager. (There's a way to roll back the driver via Windows Device Manager, right? Just make sure you don't uninstall the driver through Windows; there should be a button to click for "roll back driver.") I suggest making regular full-system-image backups of your X220 while you're working on the drivers. With my old x100e, I got myself into trouble after uninstalling AMD Catalyst Controller, and it just refused to reinstall.

Do you think like...a battery calibration would work? Go into Power Manager, Advanced, then Global Settings. Go to the battery low/critical section and click the box that says "do nothing" for when low and critical are reached. Power Manager will force the computer to run, even though the battery will broadcast a 0% level remaining. (And just to be safe, run the calibration with everything closed, use Power Manager to set the CPU to "low," and set a video looping in WMP or something like that, at brightness 11 of 15.) It's not too healthy for the battery (to deep discharge), but if you get 3-6 hours in that test, it'll be safe to say the problem's in the software, either something hogging CPU power or a driver issue.

I've done it a bunch of times, but in my experience it doesn't change much. I've only ever gotten 7-10 minutes of runtime while the battery says it's at 0%. The laptop will just wink out when it's done, no hibernation.

Re: Battery issue (6-cells) with my X220

Well yesterday I completed a battery gauge reset and the battery is still in pristine condition (capacity higher than the design one at full charge).

After that I use my PC for more than 3 hours and still add 50 percent or so of battery.

This time I turned it off before going to sleep and this moring I could use without issue for 30 minutes before going to work.

Somehow I feel this is an issue tied to hibernation since the sudden battery drop always occured after I let my PC hibernate for more than half a day. I already checked all the settings that could pump battery during hibernation, no hybrid hibernation, no wake up timer, no sleep when lid closed and even no finger print start up so that everything is off when the PC hibernates.

I will make different tests during the few coming days to see whether or not this only happens after hibernation. If so, I wonder what updates could have caused this odd change of behavior.

Re: Battery issue (6-cells) with my X220

Hmm, sorry to thread bump out of the blue like this, but I just noticed this problem myself.

My first thought is that I did obtain my 6-cell from eBay. It appears authentic and all that, and Power Manager certainly interprets the battery as genuine. But a hardware switcharoo is possible, isn't it?

But anyway, were there ever any battery firmware updates or significant bug fixes for the X220? I remember there being one for the x100e, but not for the X220. Anyone know?

Re: Battery issue (6-cells) with my X220

I've made a little progress, although the problem seems to still occur occasionally.

Try performing a full battery reset in the Power Manager. When I did that, it took hours to go from 90% indicated to 100%, which leads me to believe that the battery's internal meter was messed up. (Normally, I use the Battery Health feature to stop charging at 96%, which may confuse the internal meter. (?))

This 6-cell that I currently use was a second-hand genuine Lenovo part from eBay; the original battery was a 9-cell, which I haven't tested for the sleep-drain issue.

It's also worth noting that I use the slice battery most of the time. From a lay perspective, it seems to me switching to the new battery in combination with using the slice has confused the software. And as I said before, it also makes me suspicious of my eBay battery, but this issue seems to be happening to others with brand new parts.

Re: Battery issue (6-cells) with my X220

Ok, I think it's a problem with Power Manger 3.66 . I noticed that the power guage doens't match up with the windows power guage ( which is correct) giving the illusion that the battery isn't almost dead when in fact it is. I'm going to try to install an older version.